Saint Ereotype's Church

In the spinney on a still Sunday morning, it's always nice to hear the music drifting across the village green from Saint Ereotype's church.

The parish of Saint Ereotype has special dispensation from the diocese. It is allowed to conform to every cliched opinion held about the Church of England by the average person who gets their information from television, or from occasional visits for baptisms or Christmas.

As a result, although the congregation only numbers about thirty adults, the church has a full contingent of clergy, which it doesn't have to share with another parish. The vicar of Saint Ereotype's is a  plump, jolly lady in her 40s with a colourful taste in jumpers and poor dress sense in the way of clerical blouses.  Meanwhile the curate is a chinless wonder with an effeminate manner and round glasses.

They never hold a communion service, although they have frequent baptisms. And although they have a full-time paid organist and robed choir, the music each week consists of the same hymns: "Morning has broken"; "Lord of the Dance"; "One more step along the world I go" and "Give me Oil in my Lamp". For evensong, they replace "Morning has broken" with "Abide with me".

The congregation at Saint Ereotype's holds a collection during the service every week, but the total tends to be about £2.50. This is however not a problem as, being a branch of the Social Services, all the church's outgoings, including the vicar's comfortable stipend, are paid for by the government.

The vicar actually lives in the church. She lives in constant fear of the Archdeacon, who comes to see her on a weekly basis. Apart from Sunday services, baptism services and the weekly PCC meeting, the vicar does no work. So she can spend her time exchanging jovial but insubstantial chat in the pub, and roaring around on her motor-bike. The PCC doubles with the local civil parish council, to which nobody is ever elected as all are life-members.

Meanwhile the curate is responsible for running the Youth Club, which consists of a group of well-behaved kids who play table tennis before getting together for his "Epilogue". There is one member of the Youth Club who used to be a bit of a wild lad, but he's been so impressed with the vicar's modern ways and Harley Davidson that he's settled right down now.

So all in all it's a good life at Saint Ereotype's. In fact apart from the occasional bitter disagreement that ends with hilarious consequences, the main cloud on the congregation's blue sky is the vicar's sermons. They're well-meaning and thankfully free of any reference to the Gospel, but at 4 minutes and 10 seconds the congregation suspects they may be slightly too long for a genuinely stereotypical sermon. Still, you can't have everything, can you?

The short and depressive life of a pheasant

Pheasants are funny beggars.

They're more thoughtful than you realise. They know they're bred for shooting at. Just imagine, living your whole life knowing that your reason for existence is to be a target for others. It would be a little like, in the current environment, being the Pope. And with the added similarity that, with pheasants as with the Catholic church, it's the male that gets to wear the brightly-coloured outfits.

So pheasants grow up with a deep sense of paranoia - explaining the habit they have of sharply turning their heads, as they try to work out which direction Life is going to get them.

In order to cheer themselves up, they like to play "chicken". Although the chickens object to this outrageously species-ist name for the game, the pheasants don't care - and point out that at least they get to roam the fields.

So that's why you see pheasants hanging around at the side of country lanes, before suddenly dashing across the road in front of your car. It's not because they're stupid - although they are, of course, having very small cranial capacities - it's because they're paranoid, and they're trying to find some fun in life before they depart. They know that playing chicken may well cause their end to come more swiftly, but they figure that it's worth it if they cheer themselves up in the meantime. And in the meantime they get a sense of competition in who can cross the most busy roads before dying. Old "Buster" (all pheasants are named after movie anti-heroes) is currently up to 86, but he's slowing down so it's only a matter of time.

You have a similar group in your society. Those that, to avoid the ennui and paranoia of their everyday lives, seek risk as a way to give themselves some fulfilment while heading for an early grave. Middle-aged para-glider I guess you'd call them.

The Wild World of Apples

To you, it's just an apple core you've thrown out the window.
People do it all the time - apple cores aren't "really" litter, they biodegrade. Wasps and birds eat them. That's the theory.

I'm saying nothing.

But the unintended consequences are amazing.

Drive down most trunk roads, keep your eyes open at this time of year. Apples all the way down the verges.

Not apples you buy in the shops. These are real apples. Wild apples.

No apple pip grows to type. They're a genetic mixture. You plant a pip from an Ashmead's Kernel, you've no way of knowing what you've got. Could be the world's best dessert apple. Could be a perfect cider apple. Could be a crab. Could just be an inferior version of what was thrown out the window.  You never know.

There's a lovely cooker near our spinney. I've no idea how it got there. It was thrown out of the window in a core one day, I daresay. And it grew. We never noticed it. At least, I say "we". I never did. It must be twenty years old now. I'm the only one left from the spinney in those days. But it quietly grew on the verge, no fuss - just an inch or two, then a foot, then spreading. Then gradually - for wild apples aren't grafted onto fast-fruiting rootstocks like tame ones - gradually it would have fruited. It's a lovely cooker now. But nobody ever picks them. Apart from that maniac who comes round now and then to grab spare apples for cider.
But the birds eat them. And the wasps. And, when they fall, sometimes the rabbits.

It's a goldmine out there - all the way down the roadsides of the country.  The genetically most perfect apples you could ever find is going to be out there somewhere.  And nobody ever knows. Nobody ever knows.

God and Hedgehogs

You'd think hedgehogs would be depressed about their lot in life. Their simple habit of running around happily, then getting run over on the bypass, should leave them wondering.  Or at least avoiding roads. And yet they don't.

This is down to a deep-lying belief in fate. To a hedgehog, if one of their mates ends up squashed in the road, that's just the way it is. "It was meant to be" is a hedgehog prayer - their reaction to every failed road-crossing or the unwrapping of a friend by a badger. Which means that their equanimity is matched only by their lack of precautionary action.

If we were like hedgehogs then that's the way we'd be. As yet another disaster unfolded we'd shrug. As a friend or colleague or family member headed hellwards we'd just shrug our shoulders and assume that's the way it is.

What I'm saying is, if hedgehogs were humans they'd not be turning the house over to find one coin when they had nine perfectly good ones at home. And they'd just leave the hundredth sheep to wander across the ring-road, quietly confident that, should it collide with one of Mr Stobart's lorries then it was meant to be.

So just hope God's not a hedgehog, that's all I'm saying.

Woods and the World of Work

Being a Saturday, it's a little quieter even now than the mornings of the working week. On Saturday the western world carries on its bustle, but at least it generally leaves it a little later before it  all kicks off.

And a dull old day we have of it. It's quite mild, slightly damp, and the spinney bustles with animal life even as the plant life is starting to think of hunkering down. The squirrels are in particularly manic mood as they get their stores in order - and I think of this poor squirrel, and the lack of interest the Police took in it. At least round here there are plenty of acorns for them.

But back to the humans. It's sobering to reflect that round here the average human life is spent, working hard and enduring stress, so as to die having at some stage possessed a decent car. People surge into work and then surge home, never knowing which day will be their last. They get home glazed, and watch the telly, and go to bed, and then one day they die.

I know you humans have to work. I know it pays the bills and puts a roof over your heads and feeds the little ones. But for goodness' sake - when you're angry with the kids because you're stressed from work remember why you went there in the first place.  Take the time to learn someone's name.  Stop and look at a brook, or a hedgerow, or a tree, and wonder at the beauty that's there. But if the tree's not a hazel and there's a squirrel, please don't phone the police. Turns out they're not interested.

Some kind of sorceress?

Look, I'm the kind of primeval wood-dwelling character that spends his life away from human kind, trying to live a quiet existence in peace.

So I know little of your homo sapiens telly.

But I suspect that if the Revd Terry Jones (namesake of Monty Python's naked organist - but definitely not the same person - and leader of the equally surreal Hicksville Church for Worldwide Hatred) knew that the BBC was showing prime-time sorcery such as shown in the image above, he'd be burning British television sets as well.

Or is it panto season again?

Evensong for Starlings

I've just been listening to starlings coming into roost.  And, as often, groaning at their conversation.

You, of course, do not speak starling. You do not know the thoughts that pass through their little feathery brains.

Which is, on the whole, just as well. The inane chatter that goes on between them doesn't bear repeating. You may not realise this, but starlings are obsessive observers of back gardens. Not particularly the important details - are there many worms, where are the cats - no.  Although they do talk about these things as well. Not that it affects their behaviour in any way - no matter how detailed their description of a 9lb, orange-and-yellow seven-year-old crossbred domestic short hair, no matter how many comments upon the precise number of minutes  the moggy spends under the Ashmead's Kernel, M26-rootstock apple tree showing signs of woolly aphid infestation and where the apples are 26% ripe, 59% just under-ripe and 15% suffering from brown rot or scab - no matter about that, their mates still promptly fly back and get eaten at exactly the time the reporting starling has said the cat has a tendency to lurk in the undergrowth (64% grass, 25% clover, with minor elements of couch grass, cleaver and ground elder),

They just love reporting detail. On and on they go. Sometimes I wish I had the ears of a homo sapiens sapiens  - how you must have laughed, at the irony of that Latin tag - instead of the nature-attuned ones of a wild man of the woods.

But of an evening, especially in early autumn, they like to gather together on a roof and take part in a church service.
I say church service. The starling religion actually consists of all the birds getting together, and disagreeing whether they're on the right roof, or whether they're on the same tiles they were yesterday, and discussing whether their services this year are the same as they were last year, when the sparrow ordained to lead such gatherings as this was the late Mr Sparrow. And how it was a great shame that Mr Sparrow was eaten by that large orange and yellow cat (9lb, seven years old, tendency to lurk under the Ashmead's Kernel etc).

So when I say church service, maybe I mean more of a PCC.